by Linda Benson
Paintball acts antsy, shuffling his feet, which rocks me off balance. “What’s he doing?” I ask. “Is he going to run off?”
“Olive, this horse never even flinched when we saddled him,” says Swede. “He’s so old he couldn’t spook if he tried. Nothing to worry about.”
Paintball begins to dance underneath me and turns in the direction of the barn. He raises his head and lets loose a long neigh and his whole body shakes. “Why did he do that?”
“Oh, he’s just missing the other old codger back there,” says Swede. “I’ve got a firm hold on him. He’s not going anywhere.”
“Can I just get off now?” I feel like a baby the minute I ask, but the horse is making me all jittery and nervous.
“Sure,” Swede says, bringing Paintball to a halt. “Let’s walk him back to the barn where he can see his buddy, and you can get off there.”
My insides turn over. “No, I want to get off now.”
“Okay,” says Swede. “No problem. Whoa there, old Paintball.” He takes a firm grip on the horse. “Now swing your right leg back over the cantle, kick your feet out of the stirrups, and let yourself fall to the ground easy.”
I land with a hard thump and almost fall on my butt. I look around to see if David is watching. He is. My face turns pink and I feel about three years old instead of thirteen.
From the barn behind the house, Shakespeare lets out a long plaintive neigh of his own, and Paintball whinnies back. “Whoa there, you old crowbait,” says Swede. He jerks on Paintball’s halter a few times as he walks him back toward the barn. “Behave now.”
“Maybe it’s a good thing you got off when you did,” David says.
“I don’t really know how to ride,” I mumble. I barely know David, and I feel like I just had the most embarrassing moment of my life in front of him.
David lifts the edge of his T-shirt away from his body and wrings water out of it. He’s taller than I remember, with sandy-blond hair, and he has the most amazing green eyes I’ve ever seen.
“You’re all wet,” I say. “Like you were last time.”
“One of the things you should know about living in Washington,” he says, grinning, “is that you have to expect any kind of weather.” He points to the blue sky above us. “Now the sun’s out.”
“Yeah.” We stand there for a minute, the sudden sunshine washing over us. I don’t really know what to say. “I feel stupid,” I finally spit out. “Asking to get off the horse like that.”
“It’s okay,” he says. “You should have seen me the first time I tried to snorkel. Scared the heck out of me.”
“Snorkel? What’s that?”
“It’s where you put a mask on and breathe through this tube so you can look at cool fish in the ocean. We did it in Hawaii.”
“Yeah, I think I know what you’re talking about.”
“We’re going there again in a couple of weeks. I’ll probably remember how to do it this time. But the first time, I felt like I couldn’t even breathe. Scary. But you get the hang of it after a while. Just like riding.”
“You’re going to Hawaii? For vacation?” My mom always talked about going to Hawaii, but we could never afford it.
“Yeah. Maui. It would be more fun if I had some friends along, but I’m going with just my parents.”
I don’t know what to say to this. I think Hawaii would be awesome with absolutely anybody.
“So those people came up and got the yellow dog?” asks David.
“Yes—and guess what his name was?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Spike? Rover?”
“Calypso!”
David laughs so hard he almost chokes. “Calypso? That’s just, like, not right.”
I convulse in laughter. “I know, that’s exactly what I thought.”
David grows silent for a minute. “I hope he’s not back on a chain. I think about that dog once in a while.”
“Me too.”
We stand there for a minute and don’t say anything. There’s just quiet between us. I’m partially aware of Swede unsaddling Paintball over by the barn.
“So,” David finally says, “are you going to be here for the whole summer, or what?”
“I’m not sure for how long, exactly. I’m staying with my aunt until my mother gets out of—” I almost say it. I choke back my words. I cannot tell this boy, David, who I barely know, anything about my mother. What was I thinking?
I fidget. I look toward the barn. “I should go help Swede with the horses,” I say, thankful for an excuse to get out of this conversation.
“I gotta get going, too,” says David, looking suddenly nervous. “Finish my run.” He begins to jog in place. “Hey, what’s your address up here? Maybe I’ll send you a postcard from Maui.”
“399 Upper Ridge Road.” I have the number memorized. I check the mail every day to see if there’s a letter from my mother.
David jogs back toward the road. As he turns right toward his house, he hollers back over his shoulder. “Watch your mailbox.”
“Okay,” I mumble, but I don’t think he can hear me. “I already do.”
24-David
It’s probably a four-mile distance by the time I’ve run to the top of Upper Ridge Road where Olive lives and back home again. As I get toward the bottom I drop to a walk and begin to cool down. An evening breeze drifts off the river and I shiver, feeling an actual chill for the first time all day.
My mind churns. There’s a nagging worry about the fire chief showing up at James’s house, but also relief that since so many people have BB guns, there’s no way they can trace it back to any of us.
But what about meeting Swede Hanson like that, right out of the blue? How weird is that? He seems like a pretty nice guy, and a pang of remorse stabs me when I think about his barn going up in flames because we were in there fooling around.
And Swede was teaching Olive how to ride a horse. I grin when I think about her. She really is a great-looking girl. I don’t know why I said I’d send her a postcard. Maybe because she thought it was neat I was going to Maui. I don’t think she’s been very many places.
By the time I reach River Crest, I’m pretty much cooled down from my run. I decide to sprint the rest of the way home, just for fun. As I pass the house under construction and head down our paved driveway, I’m shocked to see my dad’s car parked in front. I know it must be almost dinner time, but he rarely gets home this early. But the thing that really worries me is that Mom is standing in the doorway watching for me.
I hustle up the driveway. Is it about my brothers, Lincoln or Grant?
Mom’s got a strained look on her face, but she’s not crying. “David,” she says, as I reach the porch. “Your dad wants to talk to you.”
I swallow a lump in my throat. I have a bad feeling about this.
My dad sits waiting for me in the dining room. “Been out for a run?” he asks.
I nod my head silently.
“Well, you better go up and get showered. The fire chief is going to be here soon for a discussion.”
“I—”
My dad raises a hand to cut me off. I can tell he’s pissed from the look in his eyes. My skin turns clammy. “Just go get cleaned up,” he says in a steely tone, “so you can at least look presentable.”
I take the steps two at a time. I turn the shower dial all the way to hot, but even though it washes all the sweat from my body, I’m still shivering. What did they find out? Did James tell them what happened? What about Sherman? He’s still out of town, right?
I run all the scenarios I can think of over and over in my mind as I throw on a clean T-shirt and Levi’s. I wasn’t even the one that brought the firecrackers, I keep thinking. It wasn’t my fault. But deep in my gut, the thing that worries me most is how disappointed Dad will be if I can’t get into the Air Force Academy because of this. I can tell by the way he looked at me, though, that he’s already disappointed, because he knows that I lied to him. Or does he? Maybe I can still t
alk my way out of things.
I glance out the window on the way down the stairs and see a white car with red markings sitting in the driveway. It’s got lights mounted on top of it. I head toward the living room like I’m on my way to the gallows.
The fire chief is a massive man, with thinning salt-and-pepper hair. He stands as I get to the bottom of the stairs and extends his right hand.
“David?”
I shake his hand, feeling my own grow clammy in his firm grip.
“Ray Brewster,” he says. He glances over at my father, who nods.
“I understand you and a couple of friends were rafting down on the river on the same afternoon Swede Hanson’s hay barn burned down?”
I try to keep my cool. Isn’t that how they do it on television? Don’t talk until you compose your words? “Yes. Yes, we were. Sir.”
My mother sits stiffly ten feet away, in one of the cane-backed dining room chairs. I glance at my dad and he’s giving me his courtroom glance. Hard and direct. I lose all my focus entirely.
“And did the three of you happen to be anywhere near the hay barn before it caught on fire?”
I suddenly feel like that yellow dog must have felt, straining against his chain. I close my eyes. What did Olive say his real name was? Calypso. What a dumb name. I feel like my own collar is too tight, like I’m struggling against the chain, pulling…if only the chain would snap and I could run away. For some reason I want to burst out laughing, but that would make me look like a maniac and maybe they’d commit me or something.
The chain does not snap. When I open my eyes again, the same three people—my mother, my dad, and the fire chief, are still in their same places in the room. All their eyes are trained on me, waiting for an answer.
“We…we ducked into the hay barn. Just for a minute, because it started to pour,” I answer lamely. I haven’t said anything yet that could incriminate us.
“And…?” The fire chief looks directly into my eyes.
I know I am caught. Busted. No matter how much I wiggle, I can’t get off of this line.
For some reason, I wish my two brothers were still here. They always looked out for me and made sure I didn’t get into any kind of trouble. They would know what I should do or say. I want to go back to the time when the five of us still had fun together, when my mother still laughed at things. Before my brothers went away and I was the only one left here except my father, who works all the time, and my mother, who can barely get out of bed in the morning.
“And, James had some firecrackers with him,” I spit out.
My mother gasps. I think she’d been holding on to the hope all along that her youngest son was perfect. She was the only person in this room, until now, who had actually believed me when I said I didn’t know anything about the fire. Now I’ve let her down, too.
“We’ve talked with James,” the fire chief says. “I wanted to get your version of the story.”
And so I tell him. I explain that James was the one lighting the firecrackers. And he was the one throwing most of them. I leave out the part where I grabbed for the last firecracker. “One of them dropped,” I say, my voice cracking. “It—it was an accident.”
“But all of you boys were messing around with the fireworks. Is that correct?”
I hang my head. “Y-yes, sir. Sort of.”
“We found about twenty firecracker wrappers out in the field,” says the fire chief matter-of-factly. “There were only a couple of fireworks stands that carried that brand. They were sold in only one assortment of fireworks.”
I gulp.
“It took us a while, but when we finally tracked down the credit card receipts from before the Fourth, we traced the sale back to James’s father.”
I stare blankly straight ahead. Just like CSI, I think.
“Mr. Hanson lost quite a bit of hay in that fire, David,” the fire chief continued. “And all three sets of parents are on the hook for financial reparation. Do you understand what that means?”
“They…they have to pay for it?” I squeak out.
“Exactly.” He clears his throat and continues. “Now there are several ways we can go about this.”
I squirm in my seat. What will they do? Throw us in jail? Aren’t we too young for that?
“Because you are all underage, it’s possible you would go before a judge in juvenile court for your sentencing.”
I cannot bring myself to look at my father. I can just imagine the disappointment he must be feeling at this. My brothers never got in any kind of trouble. I’ll be the first one. And I’ll probably never be able to get into the Academy now, either.
“But if the land owner, in this case Mr. Hanson, agrees, we might be able to work out some kind of service you boys could perform that would keep that from happening. So you would not have to go before a judge.”
My dad speaks up for the first time. “Would that wipe this off his record?” he asks.
“Yes it would,” says the chief. “As long as he performs the service faithfully and does not shirk his duty in any way. Otherwise, we reserve the right to press charges in full, for trespassing and for reckless burning.”
Holy crap, I think. How could a raft trip have turned out so wrong? This all seems like a bad dream I can’t wake up from, but the sick feeling in my gut tells me it’s real.
25-Olive
I maneuver the wobbly cart from the Shop ’n Save toward the Ford pickup, and we manage to stuff all the bags of groceries into the front seat with one balancing on my lap. We’re all stocked up for the week, and our last errand is to go by the feed store and put up a sign for the puppies. They’re eating solid food now and ready to find new homes.
“Whew, I’m bushed,” Aunt Trudy says. She’s got the key in the ignition but hasn’t started the truck. “Shopping just seems to take a lot out of me these days. Give me a minute to get my breath.”
I wait. All we did was walk around the grocery store, but Aunt Trudy’s face is flushed.
“Could you hand me one of those apples, honey?”
I fish around in the sack on my lap and find a big Golden Delicious.
Aunt Trudy takes a couple of bites and it seems to make her feel better. “I think I must have just been hungry,” she says. “Weak from hunger.” She laughs like her regular self. “Soooo…do you want to drive by the middle school?” she asks.
I shrug my shoulders. “I don’t even want to think about school. It’s barely August. Still a lot of summer left.”
“You might as well see what it looks like,” Aunt Trudy says, putting the truck in gear. “We don’t know when your mother will get out of jail.”
I wish she hadn’t said that. Jail. The word settles like a weight to the bottom of my stomach. “Do I really have to go to school up here?” My voice drops off to whisper.
“Well don’t expect me to home-school you,” chuckles Aunt Trudy. “All you’d learn is how to feed dogs and cats and horses.”
I laugh a little. “And clean puppy pens.”
We turn onto the highway that runs through town, past the Chevron station where the Greyhound bus stopped when Pendleton brought me up here last May. We make two right-hand turns and pull into the wide parking lot of a two-story brick building, with three long wings extending toward a grassy athletic field in the back. It looks lonely in the summertime, and I try to imagine the rows and rows of empty lockers inside the closed doors.
“I think I read in the paper that it’s going to be seventh, eighth, and ninth grade this year,” says Aunt Trudy. “You’ll be in eighth this year, right?”
I nod.
“Well, we’ll have to come in before school starts and get you all signed up. I think the bus used to come all the way up to the top of our ridge to pick up kids. Then it turns around at Tucker Road and heads back down the hill.”
When I don’t say anything, she looks straight at me.
“Ever ridden a school bus before, Olive?”
“A couple times,” I say. “
Once in Florida about three years ago. And once in Tennessee, when me and Pendleton were younger.”
“It’ll be all right, once you get used to it. It’s the only option we have. I’ve got my duties at the animal shelter on some afternoons. Besides, gas just costs too much for me to drive this old pickup to school twice a day.”
“What about my dad? I wonder where he’s living.” I’ve thought about it sometimes. Wondered if my dad would show up out of the blue. Drive up in some big fancy car and take me away to stay with him.
“Even if we could locate your dad, I can’t imagine what kind of schooling you’d get traveling around with him all the time. Probably none.”
I bite my lower lip. I know Aunt Trudy is right. My dad’s life has always been traveling—on the road all the time. Rags would not like that one bit.
I don’t say anything else. I guess if my mother doesn’t get out of jail before the end of summer, I’ll have to start the eighth grade up here in Washington. I suddenly wish I could talk to Pendleton and ask him what I should do. But you can’t just call somebody who’s in the Army and talk to them any time you want to.
Aunt Trudy drives toward our last stop and we pull into a gravel parking lot, still sporting puddles from the recent rain. The sign over the concrete steps says “Farm Store.” It’s one of my favorite places in town, filled with the smells of grain and animal food and hay. On the left of the double doors, before you go inside, is a big bulletin board where people post signs for all kinds of things.
“Did you bring the thumb tacks?” Aunt Trudy asks.
I nod and reach for the yellow poster board on which I’ve drawn a picture of puppies, with the words Free—Adorable Pups—Mixed Breed, and our phone number. I mean Aunt Trudy’s phone number.
“Does it matter where I put it?” I ask, squeaking the truck door open.
“No,” she says. “Try to find an open spot and not cover up anybody else’s sign.”
The bulletin board is crowded, but I move some other signs around to find a good spot right in the middle. I press in all four thumb tacks, making sure the sign is straight. As much as I love each of the puppies, it’ll definitely be less work when we find them new homes.
